Vision 2015 & Agenda 360: Working Together as a Region

For as long as anyone can remember, Greater Cincinnati has been divided into two distinct areas: to the north, Cincinnati, with the heart of downtown, its sports venues and entertainment centers; and Northern Kentucky to the south, a booming region of its own.

But in the new global economy, two local concerns are working together to leverage the strengths of both sides of the river to the benefit of the entire region.

Vision 2015, the Northern Kentucky collective that has been working to encourage growth in Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties for decades, has banded together with its younger cousin, Cincinnati’s Agenda 360, which has emerged with its own ambitious goals for Butler, Clermont, Hamilton and Warren counties in southwestern Ohio.

“It’s true that the river has historically been a border, a boundary,” says A.J. Schaefer, who serves as chairman of Vision 2015’s Regional Stewardship Council. “That’s changing. Now, because of the partnership of Agenda 360 and Vision 2015, we have more purposeful, proactive communication and partnership across civic, business, academic and philanthropic elements from both sides of the river than ever before in an effort to optimize our regional economy.”

Vision 2015 can trace its roots back to 1995’s Forward Quest community plan that helped foster in an unprecedented era of growth in Northern Kentucky. Working from that success, leaders in 2005 released the Vision 2015 plan for the next decade that targeted six critical areas to address to ensure continued growth in the three-county region: economic competitiveness, effective governance, educational excellence, urban renaissance, regional stewardship and livable communities.

With its advocacy, Northern Kentucky has enjoyed strong business growth, with unemployment rates lower than both state and national figures and lower cost of living figures.

Its success caught the attention of civic leaders north of the river, who started working on a similar effort for southwestern Ohio in 2007. Earlier this year they unveiled Agenda 360, which stakes out six goals of its own, a comprehensive plan to improve business opportunities and government, while providing residents with a better quality of life and transportation options by the year 2020. Boosting a qualified workforce and wider inclusion of opinions in regional issues are also targeted.

Despite being less than a year old, Agenda 360 has already been proactive. It sided with the opposition to Issue 9 on the November ballot, which sought to limit city leaders’ flexibility in guiding transportation projects, worked to garner wide community input on what regional priorities should be and, of course, has formed its partnership with Vision 2015.

From the beginning, Vision 2015 and Agenda 360 were destined to work together, according to Agenda 360 co-chair Mary Stagaman. Before Agenda 360 even had a name, it was drawing ideas and plans from two sources. One was Boston’s shared civic agenda, which has been credited with the city’s rejuvenation.   The other was found much closer to home.

“We recognized our neighbors were ahead of us in thinking strategically and across jurisdictional lines to advance the region. We needed a similar agenda for north of the river,” Stagaman says. “We had people from Vision 2015 working with us from the beginning, and our goals were very similar.” 

And so the collaboration was born.

“Both groups acknowledged and embraced from the very beginning that Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati are inextricably wedded economically, so it was a natural evolution for us to work together to bring the work of Agenda 360 and Vision 2015 into alignment and leverage the strengths of both sides of the river for collective success,” adds Schaefer. 

Combined, the pair have agreed on ambitious strategic goals that, if achieved, would “truly change the game” for the region. Among those goals are the creation of 200,000 jobs in the coming years, spurring an influx of young professionals, significantly increasing average household incomes and improving the region’s infrastructure.

So far, the partnership has worked on how to mark its success in reaching its shared goals, which will ultimately find its way to a public “scorecard” to gauge progress.

“One of the real successes of the partnership is we have a data team of academics and representatives from UC and NKU working to interpret what the true economic indicators of progress are. It’s a critical part of the process, because if we don’t get that right, the data we’re guided by will have little value,” says Stagaman. “They’d be meaningless.”

By next summer, those indicators should be ready for the first scorecard, which will evolve into an annual gauge of the partnership’s work.

The results, Schaefer expects, will mirror the early success that Vision 2015 accomplished, ending redundancies between community groups working toward the same goal, sapping the area’s resources. Instead, the region as a whole can put its best efforts into its priorities. 

 “It will reset the paradigm in terms of the community’s view of what it takes to succeed in a global economy,” says Schaefer.

More importantly, he adds, it will keep both sides of the river on the same page and focused on regional prosperity.

Author: Dave Malaska

Sources: Mary Stagaman, Agenda 360/Associate Vice President, University of Cincinnati; A.J. Schaefer, Vision 2015.